


in this unhappy Mansion

by luna65



Category: Pink Floyd
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Relationships, Faustian Bargain, Gen, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Paranormal, RPF, metaphysical, the ongoing battle of Which One's Pink?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 10:23:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11735094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: The Devil's in the details (of the deal).





	in this unhappy Mansion

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Devil and George Roger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237928) by [Algie_On_The_Wing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Algie_On_The_Wing/pseuds/Algie_On_The_Wing). 



> With thanks to Algie_On_The_Wing's story and certain real-life circumstances - a rather more somber take on deals with whomever one has designated as The Devil. You may notice a certain character is not listed because...well...it's not actually _him_. Or not yet, anyway.
> 
> Also in acknowledgment of Polly's interesting use of John Milton, which was as equal an inspiration as anything else.

Consult how we may henceforth most offend  
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair,  
How overcome this dire Calamity,  
What reinforcement we may gain from Hope,  
If not what resolution from despare.  
\- _Paradise Lost_ , Book One

 

He hadn't meant to listen to it. Ever. The song, the album, anything which his bete noir had to say.

**Ever.**

But in the car delivering him to the V&A for a meeting with Nick and the museum curators, that damnable chime rang out in the speakers and the driver, not really knowing anything about him, didn't think to switch it over from Radio Two. He smirked to consider that he did believe the world at large should have shielded him from one pesky guitarist who loomed deep and wide upon his professional landscape.

The long, and hard, way out of Hell rendered as some sort of metaphysical motivational speech.

_Whatever it takes to break  
gotta do it._

"Ridiculous," he whispered in answer to the upbeat vibe of the music, the way it bounced along perfectly tidy and innocuous. Only David's voice held a bit of grit to underscore the supposed theme of the demons' revolt, but still retained the lovely lilt which he had always treasured.

Roger kept himself still during the instrumental break, listening to what he could still hear of David's own fire in his soloing. Long ago and far away from what he once was, but weren't they all. He supposed, on a certain level, he could appreciate the sentiment - or at least the idea behind it, though so toothlessly articulated.

_No discord, chance or rumour  
is going to interrupt this bliss._

"Oh no," he said to the window glass and the world beyond, "nothing shall disturb you or touch you or make you feel anything other than comfortable, isn't that right Dave?"

To his left, Sean was plugged into his phone: headphones on, tapping and swiping and completely unaware. Roger turned away again and allowed the eddies of the past to wash up, triggered not only by the sound of David's voice but also the scene before him, as if he could peel away the layers and reveal himself upon those streets...all of them traipsing along caught up in their desires and ambitions. London was indeed so many layers - of time and of circumstance.

 

On a Sunday morning, engrossed in narratives of conflict as he paged through the various newspapers he made his daily reading, a knock at the front door sounded. Calm and measured, assured, not strident but nonetheless insistent. Roger started when he realized he could hear it because as he then recalled, he hadn't actually heard anyone knock on the door in many years of residence.

"Fookin' 'ell," he breathed, setting down the newspaper, calling out for anyone. _Could someone get that, please? Hello?_ But the house was quiet, almost completely silent.

It occurred to Roger that he might be dreaming. And so, in the kind of logic applicable to dreams, he went to answer the door. He feared he looked a fright: rumpled hair and pyjama bottoms, slippers and a favorite t-shirt thin with years of wear. But if it was a dream then he couldn't remedy this consideration. The knock sounded again and it was so polite, but wholly expectant of an answer. He thought if he were truly alone - waking or dreaming - then there was no way to halt this revelation.

A cautious sojourn from the morning room (so-named because it received the benevolent light of the early day, perfect for contemplating leisure or industry over a cup of coffee) down the hall and into the foyer. the chandelier above also glimmering in the diffused glow of the sun burning through the clouds which hovered above the sea. Roger looked around, feeling as though he

_was in a museum_

had been forgotten, in a place where others had moved on, found something or someone else to hold their interest. He felt doddering at that moment, confused.

"What the fuck is going on, then?" he asked anyone, everyone, himself.

He reached the door, calling out for the visitor to identify themselves, but that same dream logic would not allow it. Perhaps they could not hear through the door, his home had been made sturdy and discreet.

_I'll just wake up, then, won't I?_

But he did not, as the knock sounded twice more. The weight of the stillness around him was painful, his breathing and heartbeat ratcheting up to a full-blown panic.

_Steady on, old man, just answer the door._

Because what else could he do? Conscious or unconscious he could do nothing but stare at the door, pondering how strong it truly was. Pondering why anyone would leave him alone - he was frail, couldn't they see that?

Roger unlocked the door, turned the knob, and the gray glare filled his vision. In a moment it revealed a man he once knew. _Once_ , because he knew he had to be dreaming. He hadn't seen this particular man in over 30 years.

"Guthrie? Is that you?"

"Not exactly," replied the visitor. "But you're not dreaming, dear boy."

 

As the two greying lions were led upon the path of their own phantasmagorical history, Roger mused that it was fitting they two were the bookends of the story - Nick so concerned with historical veracity and documentation, while he was more enthralled by color and mood, with attempting to give everyone a sense of what it was supposed to feel like, what it looked and sounded like, to go back to whatever moment in time and be there. Feel the press of sorrow, the fiery flash of anger, the weight of hopelessness, or laugh for whatever reason there was for mirth. Humour could be dark or light, humour was always there, bubbling underneath the chaos.

It still pained him to see Syd, museum piece and grievous angel, preserved in the liquid light show amber of the late ‘60s. He could never be pinned down to just one thing, and of all them should never have been commodified or deified. And yet...they deserved this: a remembrance at the end of the line.

“Everything’s gone to shit, but we were pretty good, eh?” Roger whispered as he looked around.

_Time is the echo of an axe_ \- which poet had written that? It was true, everything was eventually hewn away, chiseled to reveal a singular perception. And that was what remained, regardless of whatever anyone had to say about anything.

The notion of reduction was a pain in Roger’s chest - even this comprehensive display was so limiting to his sense of the past, the layers of meaning and of memory it evoked within him, recalling details he hadn’t thought about since they had occurred.

_This is not all we were_ , he wanted to insist. _Not all we are_. But that would not be constructive.

He turned to Sean, who had been looking up at a display of photographs from the early years.

“The layout all right then?” he asked, figuring Sean could well enough play the role of Typical Punter rolling up to take a gander.

“Yeah,” he replied, adjusting his thick-framed glasses. “But it’s still kind of museum-y, I think. Not cool enough yet.”

“They’ll work in a bit more panache, I expect.”

Sean shrugged. His phone buzzed and he glanced at the display. “It’s Nigel, I should take it.”

“Tell him to stop fucking nagging me,” Roger advised, a sharp grin creasing his face. “His emails are not particularly motivational.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Remember what we talked about. You have to let him do his job,.Rog.”

Roger grunted and walked off toward the others, Nick was regaling the assemblage with some witty anecdote, the story punctuated with laughter from his rapt audience.

“Wot lies are you spinning, Nicky?”

“Only the best ones, dear boy,” his friend answered.

 

It seemed as though he had **not** invited this person in, but there they were - sitting in the kitchen, awaiting the electric kettle to boil and the tea to steep. Roger was vaguely amazed he’d actually found a box of PG Tips in the pantry.

In that gray light slowly turning brighter through the windows, he realized the eyes were different. Instead of the warm inquisitive gaze of those hazel eyes he knew so well, this...doppelganger?...possessed brown eyes which seemed just the slightest bit accusatory, judgmental, dismissive. The man he knew - had known - would never look at him thus. That man tended to retreat behind his own metaphorical wall and the distance was always evident in his gaze. He held himself back from brutal honesty and whatever he was thinking could not be glimpsed in those eyes.

Roger found it funny he had said _you’re not dreaming_ , because that’s what they always say. In the depths of a nightmare the villain turns to you and declares _This is no dream, mate. You are fucked, as you rightly deserve to be._

“So I’m 72 and you’re - wot - 30? How does that work, then?”

“I came to you as someone you trust implicitly. I thought that would make it easier for you.”

The kettle chimed, Roger poured the water into a plain white mug, he watched it darken and steam, subsuming its’ contents.

“And so why not him **now**?”

“Because your perception has been, shall we say, muddied on that detail.”

“Who the fuck **are** you?!”

“Someone who finds it amusing that you still believe you alone are the sum of your actions and your desires. Someone who can ponder if they had been God -”

“I don’t fucking believe in -”

“- anything but yourself, I am aware. But still, think of it then: would you have so very gently and deliberately pushed me out of your life if you had been God?”

The voice was James’ voice, even as it was not James and Roger felt himself flushed by anger.

“Don’t you speak as though you were him! He would **never** -”

“ - say what you needed to hear? Perhaps not. Which is why I will.”

Roger pulled at his hair. _wake up wake up wake up_

“We’re outside of time, Rog,” the other said, and his voice was the voice of the form he had appropriated from the past. “There is no time and yet time is all there is, all you know. You don’t have much of it left and you’re thinking of what you would have done. But what if you could - do those things you should have done, God of your own universe, God of the universe around you, everyone beholden to your convictions. Me. What would you have done about _me_ , Rog?”

Roger was frozen by the question, his fingers in mid-pull. He stared, and in a blink he saw those eyes, the eyes he truly knew. Another blink and they were gone. Yet another and the deeply brilliant eyes of sky were regarding him, cold as the absolute altitude before the blue turned to black. The contempt he felt to be beheld by them was acid in his throat and belly.

Another blink. _tick tick tick_

“Are you the ghost of bad decisions, then? Come to take me on a tour of my wretched life?” 

“No Rog,” the ever-changing avatar of his past replied, using that voice again. It was deeper than he imagined would come out of such a baby-faced sylph as the kid who turned up on a sunny but curiously mild summer day in 1978 to meet him, and all they did was play snooker and talk about music. He stood up to scrutiny and best of all, laughed in all the right places. “I’m not a ghost and neither are you. I’m the Devil.”

 

The museum’s publicist arranged for them to lunch privately at Hibiscus and Nick looked a bit put out at Sean’s presence, but once he realized Roger’s black-clad shadow wasn’t paying attention to either of them, he relaxed and their conversation became expansive. They discussed the safest of topics: grandchildren. Other conversational points came gently, as they out-joked one another in a continual good-natured rivalry.

“Do you remember when all we had to cling to in this area was Manna?” Nick asked, smiling.

“Because our vegetarian producer made it a clause in his contract!” Roger rejoined, and they each laughed to recall. “But the kid has good taste, it was always fine.”

“Mayfair used to seem so small, didn’t it?”

“London seems small now, to me. The traffic is fuckin’ unbelievable!”

“Yes, I have to map out my time between here and the country - so difficult to travel these days simply with all the roadworks and such.”

“Shoring up the rotting husk of Empire,” Roger gibed and Nick responded with a polite _steady on, mate_. After a few bites he carried on.

“Speaking of _husks_ , I must say you’re looking rather fit these days.”

Roger grinned. “Every time I exercise I want to bloody lie down and die, but I can manage. I feel good, actually. Stopped drinking quite so much, it’s a wonder wot a clear head will get you.”

“You’re fine,” Sean cut in, “just need to improve your cardio endurance.”

The two nodded at the other who then went back to looking at his phone.

“Nettie’s doing it too,” Nick said, nodding his head toward Sean, “all tied up in her mobile. I had to insist that she put it away at supper. Worse than the kids, that one.”

“Sometimes,” Roger commented, looking around then realizing they were the only ones in the room save an attendant waiter stationed at the far entrance, “I’m in a crowd and I feel like I’m alone, the only one actually awake in his surroundings.”

Sean gave him a pointed glance, eyebrows raised, then returned to tapping and swiping.

Roger sipped his water, thinking: _I may be a relic, a symbol, but I’ve still got some value in me._

 

“You **are** wholly awake,” the Devil informed him, “but you are not wholly present.”

 

This, now **this** was a dream. It was gauzy-lit and slow-moving and experienced at a remove. Roger had been having this dream for months, perhaps longer, but it seemed tied to the breakup, when Rula had said to him, _You’re never really here even when you’re here._ And he calmly admitted she was right. He did not cry, as was his usual reaction in an emotional conflict, he did not protest or seek weaponized words. 

In the dream he was alone on a crowded beach. No one else was looking out at the water, or the sky, or whatever might be on the horizon. He had always been fascinated by that consideration, blue meeting blue and there was no division as such, but one’s mind sought the point. Sought the orientation upon which all could be fixed. 

_Are we lost?_ he wondered. _Do we not know where we are even when we can see it?_

 

“You don’t know what’s happening to you,” the Devil informed him, “though you may believe you are the author of it. Your world is not this world, it is a bubble. In that you are no better than those you criticize.”

“There are any number of worlds,” Roger retorted.

The Devil which resembled his colleague held up a placating hand. “The greatest lie you have been told, and by _you_ I mean all of you, is that there are better worlds than this one.”

“Trust in me,” Roger said, grinning. “ **That** is the greatest lie, and they teach it to children, don’t they? Blatantly.”

“‘Trust Us,’ your sardonic Orwellian opiate. Did it ever occur to you that it was actually meant for **you**?”

 

In a townhouse, neatly tucked away where one could have not imagined the continual bustle of Greater London lay just a few streets beyond, Roger stared out the window at an overcast sky and idly strummed a guitar.

_Go write some new songs, write about what’s on your mind now_ , Nigel had urged him and Roger had balked at what seemed to be a command.

“I wrote an entire album’s worth of songs!” he insisted, but the other had sadly smiled.

“It’s just not interesting, Roger, it’s not grabbing me at all. I have to be honest.”

And though he felt he should have thought: _well wot the fuck do I care wot you think is interesting_ , there was a pang, there was a crack, there was an echo.

“Well what is that? It’s not even a song, is it?”

“Not yet! But can you hear where it’s going?”

David pursed his lips in consideration, then shrugged. “Perhaps.”

Was he fading, like a dream? Like a signal out of range? Did no one understand him any longer?

 

“If you had been God...it’s quite a notion,” the Devil opined after a sip of tea.

“Everyone thinks that, from time-to-time.”

“But not everyone is _nearly_ God, are they?”

“It’s a laugh, really. I mean, who would say they would have done a better job with a straight face?”

“You.”

Roger’s laugh showed his age, ragged and cutting. “Oh for fuck’s sake! I created a character that could have, but not me. I don’t even believe in -”

“That excuse doesn’t fly with me, dear boy. I know you better than that.”

It was downright unnerving the way this thing could keep switching its’ voice.

“Stop fucking doing that!” he shouted, so loud that it echoed against marble countertops and the house’s original wooden floor.

An absolute silence came in response, as well as an actual absence. Roger closed his eyes on the kitchen and opened them again. He was alone. But there was a teacup on the table, half-empty.

_I want you to ponder what you would have done_ , the voice commanded. Close enough for kissing, right behind his left ear, the one he heard better in because it had not been battered for decades by the high-frequency crack of cymbals. _Because we’ve a bargain to strike, you and I._

“No deal,” Roger whispered, a panicky flight of his heart making him quiver.

“Oh yes, a bargain, and you’ll price yourself much higher than you should. But then again, you always did.”

Roger cried out, clamping his hands over his ears and squeezing his eyes shut. That last had been spoken in David’s voice - and it was so absolute a mimicry as to be something he had actually said.

It probably _was_ , Roger told himself, wiping at his face with trembling hands. The bastard always knew how to be such a cunt.

 

A few days back for the transatlantic traveler and he picked at layers of recollection, peeling back what had occluded these considerations. Although Nigel had come to him, Nigel was not transatlantic, he retained his birthright and the rhythms of his speech made Roger think of his own past lives.

London was ever itself and it was his. But he did not belong to it anymore even as he followed its’ progress on a daily basis. Residence in three of the largest cities in the world had instilled within him a sense of alienation which managed to remain wholly personal. Looking in from the outside at those concerns he had once internalized so completely. He thought of how surreal it felt to read the headlines and remind himself that this is where he came from, but this was not where he lived, or even a place he understood, now. But he had always been apart from wherever he was, and again that feeling of disconnection assailed him, much as it had more than forty years ago, when he thought he might be going mad. All the sound, and the color, would drain out of the world before his eyes, causing him to believe he was paying for his trespass, his arrogance, his presumption.

Guilt...what fucking use was it? Meant to keep everyone in line, reminded to exercise their empathy, and it didn’t work. If someone meant to hurt you they would, and then suffer later. One does what one must to survive.

He tried calculating the distance to Hove from where he sat, thinking on how long it would take by car, by train, on foot. He was circling the drain again, when ideas were not there to be born, that feeling he would have of being ponderous with words. He didn’t work like this, though it was Nigel’s edict that he would. He sighed and said he would try. But he was miserable with the unfulfilled effort.

Roger liked to consider that David too was miserable, somewhere underneath that reserved exterior, the blankness of a man who enjoyed his secrets. He had always delighted in intrigues. So many times, to look across a table, a control room, a stage, the space between them in whatever mode of transport they occupied, into that face which would then smirk with the satisfaction of desire. _I know why you stare. And I see you._

It lay between them, that monolithic enterprise which was now a museum piece. It was a stone: in the road, around his neck, holding him down in the deep water of the past. He could embrace it in his own way, but to do so meant uncomfortable proximity.

“I hate you,” Roger said quietly. “I really do. I especially hate that your name must pass my lips likely until the day I die.”

In that particular stillness of a London cul-de-sac, cocooned in a not-quite quiet, lulled by the ticking of a clock, the dulcet voice of a radio announcer, he found himself thinking about those virulent conflicts which made him even more determined to go on - his entire life cast in opposition to the epithets of others.

So much so that proffered support, and care, were immediately suspect.

He could always write about that, he supposed. Anger and disgust and contempt. It was nothing new at all, but it was everything he knew.

 

The interview process had been tedious in its’ way, Sean hovering in the background, not part of the crew - which Roger imagined must have unnerved him completely - and the room was somewhat chilly but it helped, for clarity’s sake. Specific questions as regards historical events, with pieces of each personal narrative stitched one into another. A story told by each of them became a story lived by all of them. Became a story consumed by everyone else.

Sean looked twitchy and Roger delighted in his discomfort even as he knew it wasn’t fair. His collaborator was likely bored but also tetchy at not being included. They had argued about it the day before and he had wanted to remind this boy - _you could be however old you will be and you will still be a boy to me_ \- “you can’t fucking control everything, only I can do that.” Roger wondered if at some level Sean was desiring to find his way into that past, as others who had come into the organization desired to do. They thought if somehow they could latch onto the past and repackage it, the effort would make them relevant too. It was only now beginning to occur to Roger what a powerful notion that was.

“We need all these bits you see,” it had been explained to him, “where there’s no existing commentary on things.”

“I would have thought we’d talked _everything_ to death by now!” Roger rejoined with a grin.

“Or nearly so,” Po quipped.

But the stories, no matter how old and worn, held power in the retelling.

 

“You have reached a point in your existence where everything you’ve done is far more important that whatever you will do,” the Devil told him.

“So that’s the notion, eh?” Roger gibed. “Just fucking give up?”

“Oh no, dear boy - the point is to live with all of it: infamous, anonymous, and glorious.”

“I might yet do something glorious.”

The Devil’s stolen hazel eyes flashed. “Not the way you’re going, you won’t.”

 

_Why did you do it?_  
_How did you do it?_  
_What did it mean?_

 

They had argued, though intermediaries, about what should be included, what should be emphasized, what was important and what was not. Naturally, Roger and David had opposing viewpoints regarding certain eras whereas Nick - onboard for all of it - remained tactfully noncommittal.

“An entire room dedicated to that fair forgery, what crap!” Roger wryly commented to Nick as they progressed through the exhibit, taking in all of the visual details. There were already a few notes he had given to the staff, just small things but important to his sense of order and arrangement.

“Well a sense of scale is something we can take advantage of, here.”

“Nicky, don’t equivocate on his behalf, for fuck’s sake! It’s bullshit power games and you know it. I’ll keep the gloves on but **you** must suffer my unvarnished commentary.”

“Yes dear,” the reply came wrapped within a sigh, as Roger was near enough a deep emotional connection to warrant a spousal platitude.

“Besides, it won’t do him any good - he could stand on top of the Shard and scream its’ glory and genius to the heavens and at least half the world would say the same: ‘Wot crap!’”

Nick, despite his neutral protective coloring, let out with a guffaw.

“Steady on, my liege. It’s all consigned to the caprices of opinion now.”

“Some of which are more valuable than others,” Roger rejoined, nodding to himself and moving on.

 

“It was that very deal which made me curious you see,” the Devil said. “You gave him so much.”

“It was worth it, and I’ll tell you why.” Roger sat down at the table and sipped at a fresh cup of coffee.

“I’m the Devil, I know everything.”

“You _think_ you know everything, but that’s your sin, isn’t it? Arrogance.”

The ghost of the young man before him smiled his enigmatic smile. He had never smiled much that Roger could recall. Not because he was necessarily gloomy, but rather so intense that smiling was considered a frivolous activity, generally-speaking.

“Inform me of my ignorance then, if you please.”

“He doesn’t own _any_ of it. He has lawyers and handlers and documents which state he does, but the bald fact is he does not. It doesn’t belong to him, not all of it, not most of it. David is only a part of all this and it’s bigger than any of us. He is also arrogant and seeks to suppress anything which he deems not the story he wants everyone to believe.”

“But that’s history, dear boy. History is written not only by the victors, but the people who seek to impose their own version of events.”

“And you approve of such things?”

“I approve of chaos - rallying in the face of entropy.”

“Then consider that I have rallied in the face of mendacity.”

“Quite so. And it’s a story which doesn’t do you any favors.”

Roger suppressed an urge to fling his cup of coffee at the vision. “Fuck that! If I can’t admit what an arsehole I was, sometimes, then what has all this living been for, exactly?”

“What indeed,” the Devil echoed.


End file.
